"Hey, Joey? Joey," my sister repeated, "wake up."
I had stayed up late last night playing video games and was a little irritated when I realized that she was actually yelling at me to wake up and that it wasn't just in my dream. I was even more irritated when I looked at the alarm clock on my night stand and saw that the time was seven o'clock in the morning. I had only gotten four hours of sleep.
"What do you want Carly?" I asked, a little more harshly than I really meant to.
She seemed to notice that I was annoyed and looked slightly apologetic as she said, "Mom and dad are at work, and I was wondering if you would take me to the mall so I could do some Christmas shopping for them."
"Why do you need me to take you? Why can't you go by yourself?" I asked. After all, she was eighteen, she had her license, and she had her own car as well.
"You know I don't like driving that far by myself," she said. "And you also know that I am a terrible driver, so driving around in the city scares the crap out of me."
The closest mall to our small town was about an hour away, but it was that last part was what convinced me that she may be better off if I drove her. I mean, she may be a little annoying at times, but she was my sister and I loved her, and I sure as hell didn't want her to get into a wreck and possibly get hurt.
"Okay. Just let me get dressed," I said.
She shot me a big smile and said, "Thank you," as she turned and walked out of my bedroom, shutting the door behind her.
It didn't take me long to to get dressed at all. I just grabbed a pair of jeans and a t-shirt out of my closet and threw them on. I then picked up my phone from my night stand and checked the weather for the day. It said that it would be pretty cold (about twenty degrees Fahrenheit) So I threw on a sweat shirt as well. Living in Indiana like we do, you kind of get used to the cold and sort of build a tolerance to it, especially if you are just going from a heated house to a warm car. About fifteen minutes later, after I had eaten my breakfast and woken up a little bit, we were off.
While we were at the mall, Carly must have gone into every single store that was there. She was buying so much stuff and I was starting to wonder if she had lied to me about Christmas shopping for mom and dad. Much to my displeasure, I was the mule that had to carry most of the bags while she carried one small one. In her defense, though, I did offer to carry a couple.
"I thought that you were only shopping for mom and dad," I said.
"Well, I thought that will I was here, I should just go ahead and get all of it done," she said. "So I bought some stuff for a few of my friends and, well, one or two things for myself."
A short time later it was nearing lunch time and I mention that I was starting to get hungry. Carly agreed that it was time to eat and, for a short while I was able to unload all of the bags that I was carrying. However, we were soon at it again.
"Are you almost done?" I asked her, taking a peek at her cell phone as she was texting someone, and trying to see what time it was. It was almost four o'clock in the afternoon.
"Almost," she said. "I just have to stop in one more store."
When we got there she told me to wait outside and that's when I noticed that she was going into my favorite store. I started to protest but she said more sternly, in a voice that was so scarily like our mother's, "Wait out here."
"Okay," I said, defeated.
About ten minutes later she came out with a bag that she held shut and would not let me see inside of.
"Okay, we can leave now," she said.
We started back towards the entrance that we had come in at. When we got to the door, our jaws dropped. There was about two inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down fast. They weren't just little snowflakes either. They were at least an inch and a half around. That was the one big problem with Indiana: the weather. It can be very unpredictable at times with it sometimes being bright and sunny out, then the next minute, it will be dark as night and pouring down rain.
"Well, there's nothing we can do about that." I said after a few seconds of staring, then pushed the door open and we both headed for my car.
I put our bags in the trunk and then handed my sister the keys as I grabbed the ice scraper that was back there. She got in and started it up as I wiped the snow off of the car. After about five minutes, I was sure that I would be able to see out the windows, so I put the ice scraper back and got in.
Once we got out on the highway, the driving conditions were a little less desirable than the city roads that had been plowed and salted. Actually, "a little" might be an understatement. I was driving in near white-out conditions. I was suddenly happy that I had agreed to drive Carly here. I dread to think of what might have happened if she had driven herself. We didn't get very far, however. We had driven maybe fifteen miles when the roads became too slick for me to maneuver.
"Carly," I said to her. "Call home and tell mom and dad that we are going to have to stop somewhere for the night. The roads are getting to bad to drive."
"Well, I can do that if you let me borrow your phone. Mine died while I was in that last store," she said.
"Damn it," I said. "I left mine back at home. I set it back down on my bed after I looked at it this morning and forgot to pick it up. I guess we will just have to call them when we find a hotel."
A few minutes later we saw a sign for a hotel that was at the next exit. The exit was only about a mile away, so that's where we decided to stop. Carly and I both went in to see if they had any rooms left.
